Thursday, March 28, 2013

After Aliaa , now another 19 year old Muslim girl
Amina from Tunisia has posted a topless photo of herself bearing the slogan “my
body belongs to me, and is not the source of anyone’s honour” . She has been
threatened with death by fundamentalist clerics.

Here I want to quote few passages of one of my
articles, I wrote with respect to clarify my ideas on Aliaa Magda Elmahdy.

< An
Excerpt from my essay ‘The Aliaa Effect’>

“Besides the question of women’s rights over their
own body and the freedom of self-expression, Aliaa raises two major points in
her posts and interviews. One is about the use of the veil and another on the
virginity test. On the veil, she comments many women wear it just to escape the
harassment and be able to walk the streets in peace.

Sexual harassment is a serious problem in Egypt.
According to a 2008 survey conducted by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights,
83 percent of Egyptian women have been sexually harassed (Source: Johnston,
“Two-thirds of Egyptian men harass women?”; see also Magdi Abdelhadi, “Egypt’s
sexual harassment ‘cancer,’” BBC News, July 18, 2008,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7514567.stm.) However, it cannot be
assumed that all women in Egypt are wearing the veil for this one reason. By
connecting sexual harassment and the veil, Aliaa gives the impression that the
veil is strongly associated with oppression.

Maybe not, though. In some countries, veils are
used as a protest. In Europe, where wearing the Islamic veil (hijab/niqab) is
banned, women protest wearing it. In Libya, under former ruler Muammar Qaddafi,
the Niqab was banned. According to a report from The Economist, women across
Libya are now celebrating over the restoration of their right to wear it. In
contrast to Aliaa undressing herself in search of freedom of expression, some
Libyan women want to dress and wear such clothing to feel themselves in real
freedom and real expression in what they believe. What would Aliaa and her
boyfriend say? What could they say? Is this not freedom of expression too?

And about virginity test in Egypt, the Human
Rights Commission is still probing the cases continuously performing the
Military-style brutal test to insert two fingers into vaginas of women to test
their virginity in and after Mubarak’s reign. During an interview with CNN, in
May, a SCAF general, talking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged the army
had conducted "virginity tests." "We didn't want them to say we
had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren't
virgins in the first place," he said. "The girls who were detained
were not like your daughter or mine. These were girls who had camped out in
tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov
cocktails and [drugs].” ( Source:
http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/246877/20111110/egypt-virginity-tests-used-military-humiliate-women.htm).
It is true to believe that the military authority who believes in virginity
test has no right to raise a question on the grounds of morality?

Aliaa’s
Actions: a Help or Hindrance

But do Aliaa’s actions support or hinder a healthy
debate on the sexual rights of women?

Sexual rights are often misunderstood and wrongly
defined either by feminists or by activists. What do you want to mean by
woman’s right on own body? Is ‘body’ an alternate term for ‘sex’ or ‘sexual
object?’

Is a ‘woman’s body’ inherently sexual, and can it
be used to define any object subjected for passionate feelings only? Is there
no need of correlating hunger, sufferings, pain, and shame with that object?
Women's bodies are always the issue - too unclean for Hindus, dangerous enough
to be covered up for Muslims, and obscured for Christians. We should be more
cautious about differentiating these terms carefully. Otherwise there may be
every possibility for women to become and remain tools of oppression.

Patriarchal practices shape and perpetuate gender
inequality and strip women of any form of control over their sexuality. It is
double standard of patriarchy that when it needs to, it allows a woman to
disrobe and we can see how the grammar of fine arts are created with the
patriarchy accepted social standards of aesthetics and modesty/morality. We see
how mythologies played a significant role in focusing a philosophical attitude
toward sex. Even the patriarchal effect has been prominent when we find Shakti,
the female god is painted with her nudity. When Aliaa disrobes herself, it is
patriarchy which shouts with a hefty voice raising the question of morality.
But what about other events like fashion shows, beauty contests, or bar girl
dances in restaurants and clubs? Morality, in the case of female sexuality, has
often been misused or used intentionally to oppress feminine rights and always
used by patriarchy as a tool to oppress women.

British feminist and goddess activist Asphodel P.
Long (1921-2005) often considered the grandmother of the Goddess Movement in
Great Britain once wrote something which can apply to Aliaa’s recent
activities. She wrote, “Freud is said to have asked: "What do women
want?" Women know what they want. Their difficulty, which is mine, is to
find words to describe, and to produce ideas acceptably. Not because we are
"silly" but because words and ideas have grown over the last 5,000
years in a patriarchal setting, and describe what men want. Every word,
sentence and set of ideas is painful to write, is open to misinterpretation,
certainly by men.” (source:
http://www.asphodel-long.com/html/politics_of_sexuality.html).

It is explainable why Aliaa did what she did. What
she couldn’t do with words, she did with her actions. She boldly spoke volumes
using the power of an image -- something to which everyone can relate and
understand no matter where they live or what they do or in what they believe.”

Readers can
read the full article from
http://feminine-fragrance.blogspot.in/2011/11/aliaa-effect-try-models-who-posed-naked.html

In continuation with my last status update posting
on Amina’s nude protest, I drag the attention of my readers to few less
discussed news of India.

<Nude
protest is not new news for India.>

A dozen “women” went “naked” on the streets of
Imphal on July 15, 2004 intending to protest against the brutal killing of
Manorama at the gate of 17 Assam Rifles (Kangla Gate) in the capital town -
Manorama was killed by the personnel of 17 AR personnel of Indian Army.

Stung by the continuing abduction of children by
separatists in Manipur, a group of school students stripped and marched on the
streets in Imphal on July 28, 2008, Monday to protest the rebels’ drive to
forcibly induct child soldiers.

On March 7, 2013, a few women staged a semi-nude
protest against land acquisition for Posco’s proposed steel plant in Odisha,
and were arrested, after which the land acquisition was halted.

It’s an amazing fact to mark that patriarchy
appreciates the women as celebrities who are appearing nude on the covers of
the magazines and disapproves those who are using this nudity as an action to
show their anguish to irritate the system. A woman’s naked body has always been
the instrument of the patriarchy.

And also this is a magnum point to be considered:
Are the protestors’ breasts not obscuring the message they intend to convey as
their such shows are meant for press and online media only and most of the
users of U Tube visit those sites to access porno videos?